More from Muslim Mafia. “Book Exposes CAIR’s Exaggerations, Efforts to Stymie Law Enforcement,” from IPT News, October 15
A new book claims to give readers an inside look at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), arguing everything from its claims of financial and political clout to its genuine agenda are rooted in deception.
Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America is based in large part on access to CAIR operations obtained by Chris Gaubatz, the son of co-author P. David Gaubatz. Using an alias, the younger Gaubatz spent six months as a CAIR intern in 2008.
Working under the name David Marshall, Chris Gaubatz worked closely with CAIR leadership including Executive Director Nihad Awad, Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, and Legislative Director Corey Saylor. Chris Gaubatz claims to have walked out with 12,000 pages of documents (most of which he had been instructed to shred) and 300 hours of clandestine video.
Among the findings from co-authors Gaubatz and Paul Sperry: that CAIR wildly exaggerates its membership numbers, that it is plagued by budget problems and dissension, and that it is financially dependent on a small network of wealthy Persian Gulf-based donors. In many cases, the book adds precision to general facts about CAIR that already are in the public domain. […]
Muslim Mafia claims that CAIR relies on two dozen wealthy supporters, many of them from Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for 60 percent of its $2.7 million annual operating budget, including one donor who contributes $600,000 a year.
The authors point to notes from a 2006 board meeting where Awad reported that the Washington public-relations firm Hill and Knowlton had put together a “business plan” to help CAIR raise money from other Gulf states. State Department records obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism show that that year, CAIR officials, with Hill and Knowlton in tow, sought huge donations from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. […]
In January, the Investigative Project on Terrorism broke the news that the FBI had cut off access to CAIR after evidence in the HLF trial showed CAIR founders were part of a Hamas-support network in the U.S. In a subsequent letter, an FBI official said questions about CAIR’s relationship to Hamas led to the conclusion the agency could “not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”
Anecdotes in Muslim Mafia won’t help the organization return to the FBI’s good graces. It offers examples of CAIR’s efforts to impede federal investigations related to terrorism despite its claim to be a partner to law enforcement.
For example, Chapter Six details the way CAIR coached a mosque leader in Western Maryland not to cooperate with an FBI investigation of suspicious activity.
Likewise, a 2004 investigation was thwarted when the FBI raided the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America in Merrifield, Va. on suspicions of terrorist activity. But when the agents from the Bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrived, the book claims, the building had been cleaned out because CAIR had warned institute officials of the raid.
Another chapter is devoted to the case of former Fairfax County,Va. Police Department Sergeant Mohammad Weiss Rasool, who pled guilty to illegally searching a federal database in order to tip off a terror suspect about an FBI investigation.
“He’s a habitual liar and a traitor,” a senior FCPD official said of Rasool. “He disgraced the uniform.” As CAIR’s representative on the police force, Rasool traveled into the District of Columbia to meet with CAIR Executive Director Awad. A CAIR visitor log published on p. 325 of the book, documents one of Rasool’s visits in 2005.
The log is among numerous examples of internal CAIR documents cited in the book. Among them is a 2007 letter thanking Awad and CAIR for “the additional contribution of $9,000 to be used for the legal expenses relative to Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s case.” [Emphasis added]
Al-Amin was convicted in 2002 of killing a Georgia police officer. CAIR and other Islamist groups have touted his case, but the book shows CAIR gave directly to his legal fund. […]
So far, CAIR has not challenged the veracity of the claims in Muslim Mafia. Instead, it has focused on the authors’ political backgrounds and minimized the findings. “All they can come up with is that we are political active?” Hooper asked in a Politico story. “The terror threat is that Muslims are politically active?”
That seems a deliberate attempt to misstate the issue, which is not whether Muslims should be employed on Capitol Hill or anywhere else. It is whether CAIR is an honest and reliable broker for American Muslims. The record, already long and detailed before Muslim Mafia‘s publication, shows CAIR habitually engages in deception about its activities. The book reinforces that conclusion with internal examples.